


shines with a light so rare

by telanaris



Series: Arcana One-Shots [19]
Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-12
Updated: 2018-11-12
Packaged: 2019-08-21 07:09:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16572002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/telanaris/pseuds/telanaris
Summary: “You must think I’m a real coward, I bet,” Julian adds, interrupting her thoughts. “To see me so frightened, after all my crowing and boasting.”Aredhel breaks their entanglement.  She sits up and turns in his arms, and oh, isn’t he a sight? The sunlight painting his face in soft pinks and oranges, his hair blazing. His grey eyes smolder like coals. Touching his cheek feels like touching a painting.“No,” she says, shaking her head for emphasis. “No, I think you are brave. But living for something is harder than dying for it.” She adds, more quietly, “I don’t want you to die for me, Julian.”______________________________AU retelling of "the Star" book, Julian's route.





	shines with a light so rare

**Author's Note:**

> A retelling of "the Star" book for Julian's route. I pretty much threw the 'canon' events of this chapter out the window.

“I don’t like this. I don’t like this _at all._ ”

Julian clasps Aredhel’s hand so tightly in his, it pinches. His face drains of color as he leans over the edge of the Magician’s realm. Below, sand and water fall an impossible distance into a warped space that swirls and folds upon itself, obscuring all territory beyond. There is no sign of Scout.

“Magic or not, that’s a leap too far for me,” Julian says, shaking his head as he steps back from the edge. “There’s no telling what’s down there—if we even survive going ‘ _down there.’_ And if we do—what if it’s another trap, like the Tower? What if it’s _worse?_ ”

As gently as she can, Aredhel pulls her hand from his tense grip. She slides her palm flat between his shoulder blades. Julian’s arm wraps around her waist; he pulls her to him.

“I’m not worried about the falling,” Aredhel says. “We were all right, when the bridge collapsed, and the Tower crumbled. We floated down here so gently.”

“ _Then_ we didn’t have much of a choice. Now, we’re not falling—you’re asking me to jump.” Distress twists Julian’s features. His gloves are not thick enough to hide the way his hand on her waist trembles, faintly.

“In the Tower, I woke to the sound of you screaming in agony. I heard you _dying…._ Aredhel, I don’t know how much more of that I can take.”

“That was not me,” Aredhel says, taking his hand in hers; its trembling dulls. “It was no more than an illusion. We are stronger than that.”

But the line of Julian’s lips wobbles with uncertainty; still his eyes fix over the edge. Aredhel watches his face, her fingers fanning across his back, stroking his shoulders over his coat. She adds, softly, “Julian, I would not ask you to do this if I thought you might get hurt.”

‘ _That is why I am doing all of this,_ ’ Aredhel thinks to herself, remembering the palace garden, a black feather and a cloth scrap dissolving in a bubbling, viscous black, and Valdemar dragging Julian’s body into the hidden shadows of the hedge maze. ‘ _Because I do not want to see you hurt, and I do not know how much time we have, even if it does pass differently here._ ’

Julian tears his gaze from the miasma below to look at her. He does not look the least bit convinced. Suddenly, he pulls her body flush against his and, when no space remains between them, he kisses her, hungrily, desperately. His fingers wind into the hairs at the back of her neck.

“Then let me go first,” he whispers, lips brushing against hers. “I will make sure it is safe.”

That Aredhel will not allow. She has made that mistake already once before: back beneath the library, at the laboratory entrance, she ought to have crammed into that elevator with him, no matter how bruisingly the descent would have crushed them together.

“What good will that do?” she asks him. “You may not be able to tell me, once you make it.”

“I’ll signal back to you,” he insists, determined. “There must be something—a magic flare? Or some spell—some way to send a message.”

There is no guarantee such a spell would work here, nevermind whether or not Julian could be taught to do it in short order. But that seems, to Aredhel, beside the point.

Taking his jaw in her hand, she asks him, “Julian, what is this about?”

He can’t look at her; his eyes fix on his boots. But then, with a trembling exhale, he bows his head and leans it against hers. “I don’t like it, Aredhel. I don’t—I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

Aredhel does not fault him for his fears. But whatever his reservations, she trusts the dog-headed guide; she is sure that Scout would not lead them this way if it would put them in harm.

“Believe in me,” she whispers sweetly into the intimate space between them. Julian’s breath is warm as it caresses her cheeks. “Trust me. We will be safe, as long as we stay together”

“You are asking me,” Julian sighs, “to take a leap of faith. But it is a _very_ far leap, Aredhel.”

Aredhel only smiles—she imagines that even if Julian can’t see it, he can feel it, the way it tugs at the skin of her face where it meets his. Perhaps it is a far leap, but Aredhel would guess they’d flown much farther on that Masquerade attraction, when they’d zipped down the cable from the tower to the gardens. Then, Julian had laughed in her ear, holding her close. Her heart had pounded in her throat the whole way down. She had been too terrified to scream.

She cannot resist:

“Nothing like a death defying stunt to wake you up, right?”

Julian makes a bitter sound between them, something between a groan and a mirthless laugh.

“That time we had a harness.”

“Then I will be your harness,” Aredhel tells him, holding his face between her hands. “I will be the cable that keeps you safe.”

She guides his head lower and presses a kiss to his brow, then a gentler one to his eyelid, as she had mere days ago—though it felt like lifetimes—in Muriel’s hut.

“It’s okay to be frightened,” she says, pulling away to meet his eyes. “But please trust me. We will fall,” she says, and grins, “but I will catch you. Magician types, we are very good at things like that.”

Julian shudders, and his eyes search hers. “Can we go together?”

Aredhel kisses him, a gentle press of her mouth to his. “I would have it no other way.”

  
  


“On the count of three. One, two… _now._ ”

When it comes to it, Julian does not really jump. But Aredhel does, and Julian is clutching her hand so tightly and standing so near the edge that when Aredhel goes Julian tumbles off after her, swept away by her momentum. The black between the stars swallows up the sound of Julian’s yelp, but Aredhel sees his mouth shape it; she suppresses a laugh. He looks just how she had felt on that zip line. But as he did for her, then, she will draw him close, keep him safe at her side.

Before she can, Julian’s hand slips from hers.

She catches the panic on his face, sees her name in his mouth before the their fall steals the sound of it. Her heart falls into her stomach and lands with a wet, wrenching plop.

The speed of their fall accelerates.

The Magician’s realm winks and disappears above them. The stars whip by so fast the pinpointed light streaks. They are plummeting, their party clothes catching in the air, whipping about their bodies as they fall towards the miasma. The feathers of Julian’s collar flutter frantically in a mockery of flight. Julian’s fingers spread, grasping, and his eyes widen with desperation, but no matter how they reach for one another, their hands do not meet.

And try as she might—and she tries so very, _very_ hard—the magic Aredhel casts around them does not slow their descent in the slightest.

She does not think Scout fell this fast.

_‘Think, Aredhel. Think.’_

_“I will be your cable.”_

...In the Hanged Man’s realm, before Julian’s first death, the most delicate thread of Asra’s magic had tied itself to her wrist, a lifeline to pull them back to the waking world in the event of danger. Now, Aredhel closes her eyes and reaches for Julian’s magic. Before such a feat would have been impossible for her, but now that Julian has managed his first spell, now that Aredhel knows what his magic _feels_ like—and there it is, the smoulder and crackle of magical aptitude that Julian has let slumber for years, a distant storm in the horizon, salt and lightning. She seizes it, yanks it—

Aredhel’s hand finds not Julian’s fingers, but his forearm; she tangles her fingers as tightly as she can in the sleeve of his jacket. The fine fabric tears in her grasp; she fists her fingers in the white silk of his chemise. With all the strength she can muster she drags Julian towards her. As soon as he is drawn against her he wraps both his arms and his legs protectively around her, sheltering her body with his own, even as buries his face against her hair, unable to look at the uncertain ground they are still hurtling towards with alarming speed.

...But then, gently, they slow.

Julian doesn’t seem to notice; his face is still pressed to Aredhel’s scalp. But over his shoulder Aredhel catches glimpses of a distant lighthouse, a distant shore across a glittering sea. Beneath her legs a forest opens its arms, trees parting like wheat to let them meet the ground unscratched by the pine branches.

As they float downward amongst the trees Aredhel disentangles Julian’s limbs from her body, peppering kisses on his forehead until his face comes out of hiding. He blinks, curious, and more than a little astounded. It is the same surprise Aredhel feels, though she hides it better, putting on a brave face for him, still pressing her mouth to his temple, his brow. She manages to wind an arm beneath his knees, around his shoulders; by the time her feet touch the ground she is able to set him, gently, onto his feet.

Julian stumbles, but Aredhel holds him straight; he recovers quickly. He looks around in wonder, then breaks out into a brilliant laugh.

“We made it, Aredhel! You knew we would. Though that was a good trick with your magic, slowing us down once you caught me.”

Aredhel opens her mouth to protest, but Julian takes it in his before she gets the chance. ‘ _It was not my magic,_ ’ she thinks, as he kisses her. ‘ _I did not do a thing. But did you?_ ’

He draws her against him, so close she is nearly swept off her feet. “You really are too indulgent with me,” he says, with a fondness in his eyes that leaves something warm blossoming in her chest. “You could’ve pushed me off the edge and made your point just as clearly.”

Julian’s face is flushed—with embarrassment, maybe, or the exhilaration of the fall—but he is undeniably pleased, too. He brushes his lips against her cheek. “You will never be rid of me, if you go on like that.”

Aredhel probably should press the subject—figure out exactly what slowed their fall. But they are in the realms of the Arcana, and the rules here were different. For all she knew it might be as impossible to explain as the tea falling back into the kettle among the mangrove trees.

She smiles, instead. “Then the indulgence is working precisely the way it’s supposed to.” She kisses the corner of his chin, runs her hands through his hair.

Julian hums warmly, ducking his head to kiss the sharp bones of her collar. His hold on her loosens, becomes gentler, more tender. For a moment, held so softly by him, Aredhel forgets the lighthouse, the Magician’s ominous warnings, the Masquerade, the plague. Even Lucio she forgets. She is in Julian’s arms; she is content.

But the moment is short-lived.

“Hruff!”

Scout’s bark draws their attention. Their stands beside a cliff of freckles and moss-covered granite. Lichens bloom a sickly yellow-green on the great boulders’ haunches. Scout stands beside a cleft in the stone, unremarkable at a glance. But then she waves her walking stick about in its mouth. As she does, the sticky webbing of some massive creature—translucent before it catches light _just_ so—gathers, and glistens.

Julian’s grip on Aredhel’s waist tightens. “Uhh, Aredhel…?”

With the entrance is clear, Scout steps into the tunnel. The dog-headed guide pauses only to motion for Julian and Aredhel to follow her. Then, she proceeds; the darkness enshrouds her utterly within a few steps.

“You’ve got to be joking,” Julian groans, half under his breath.

“We should follow her,” Aredhel says, but she can hear the hesitance in her own voice. Still she walks cautiously towards the cave. She does not get far before Julian’s hands seize hers, trying to draw her back.

“Aredhel, wait! Don’t you see these spider webs? Whatever made these must be huge! It could be dangerous, and I... I don’t want you to go down there.”

Aredhel does not fault him for his fears. But when he speaks them a foul air of rot and rancor drifts out of the cave, as if the trembling pitch of his voice has summoned it. Julian’s eyes are wide, his mouth an ugly grimace, but he must catch a whiff of the odor, because he winces and moves to cover his nose with his sleeve, eying the cave warily.

Aredhel suppresses a frown, confusion fighting the corners of her mouth down like fishhooks. When has Julian ever shied away from an adventure? He has relished danger, or often found himself blithely and delightedly rushing towards it. She recalls his ‘shortcut’ in the Hanged Man’s realm, the wealth of stories he’s told her from his past. If he has been even a little truthful, he’s faced far worse than this.

‘ _What has come over you?_ ’ she wonders, but it is a question she cannot answer on her own. What she does know is that they must continue on; the people they care about are relying on them. They cannot lose their path forward.

Aredhel lifts her hands to his face. She asks, teasing gently, “Julian, where is your sense of adventure? I thought you lived for things like this. My scientist, my field medic, my swashbuckling pirate—”

“Captive physician,” Julian corrects, with a defeated look.

“Oh, sure, you say that _now._ ” Aredhel smooths her hands down the sides of his neck, across his collar to hold his shoulders. “We will do it together,” she says, with a confident smile. “Like the jump. We will be brave together: the captive physician and the magician besotted with him.”

Julian scoffs. “ _You_ will be brave, you mean, and drag me off the edge with you.”

Aredhel clicks her tongue. “You give yourself no credit, Ilya. You are one of the bravest men I have ever known.”

That quiets him—the use of his birth name, or the praise, or both. He colors.

“Can I show you something?” Aredhel asks, ignoring for the moment the beautiful heat in his cheeks. “Teach you something. I’d like to help you cast a simple spell.”

Julian’s bashfulness gets swallowed up by his skepticism in an instant. “I don’t know, Aredhel,” he says, dryly, glancing at the cave in front of them. “I’m not feeling particularly keen on magic at the moment.”

Aredhel steps in front of him, blocking the caves entrance from view. “We don’t have to if you don’t want to. But you’ll like this,” she reassures him, smiling. Then, she hastily adds, “It’s not a kinky thing. Not like in the tower. It’s just… it’s nice.”

Her enthusiasm blunts the edge of Julian’s skepticism; he cannot suppress a cheeky grin when she feels the need to qualify that the magic is ‘not kinky.’ “Well, I suppose. If you insist on looking at me like that, all doe-eyed and sweet about it.”

Aredhel grins, pecks him on the cheek before she eases back into her heels and holds her hands out, palms up.

“Give me your hands?”

Julian heaves a ragged sigh, but places his hands into hers without a fight, palms down. Gently, Aredhel flips them outwards, so his palms open to the ceiling, her hands beneath his. Bringing his hands together, she closes her eyes and marshalls her magic. Her magic yields it to Julian, reaching towards his own, ready to be tapped like a sap-rich tree.

“I don’t know why you insist on teaching me so many things,” Julian fusses, fidgeting. “I’m sure this new fascination will quickly disappoint. I’m never going to be very good at magic, it’s just not in my nature.”

“You’re fishing for praise, but I’ll indulge you: that’s nonsense, Julian. As a student I find you very promising.”

His blush reignites, but this time it is not so bashful. His voice drops to a sultry tone. “What use will you make of all that promise, I wonder?”

Aredhel leans her head against his shoulder and muffles a laugh against Julian’s feathered collar, ruffled from their earlier fall. “I told you it wasn’t kinky. Not this time.” She kisses his throat, and closes her eyes. Her magic stretches towards his.

“Remember when we first came here?” she asks him, softly. “Remember the sky. How many stars there were, how brilliantly they shone. Think of that. Think of light.”

“Think of light?” Julian repeats.

(And closed in concentration as her eyes are, Aredhel does not see how tenderly he looks at her when he says it. His eyes lock upon her, and he barely breathes, barely stirs, a soft smile on his lips as he admires her. ‘ _You are my light,_ ’ Julian thinks, and the thought fills him up with all the colors and warmth of dawn. ‘ _Can’t you see that’s why I don’t want to go in there, where I’m afraid the dark will swallow you?_ ’)

(But, “ _Think of the Seafarer’s Star,_ ” and Aredhel’s tone, inky as the sea, brings to mind the softness of the north star upon shifting dark waters, constant and faithful and brilliant. A path of starlight glittering on the sea, straight as an arrow, guiding the way to port.)

Aredhel feels the seed of Julian’s magic; she feeds it. When she pulls her hands away Julian cries out—already the light, strong as it is, leaks through his fingers. His hands open. Between his palms warbles a soft blue magelight, pulsing faintly in the bright glare of day.

Julian stares at it, mouth still hanging open in disbelief. “What, uhh—what do I do with it?”

Aredhel presses her own palms together to ignite a magelight of her own. “Hang it,” she says, tossing it over her shoulder where it rests, suspended. “Change it’s color, spin it around… whatever you like. Or don’t. Either way it will give you some light in there. Do you like it?”

Hesitantly, as though he expects it to burn him, Julian cups the magelight in his palm. Then he experiments, tossing it up and down in the air, guiding it in a revolution around his head. Though the orbit is unsteady, still he laughs in delight. “I do like it,” he replies, softly. “You were right—it is nice magic. Thank you.”

“I’m glad.” Aredhel reaches out to squeeze his shoulder, then smooths her palm down his arm and takes his hand in hers. “Julian, I don’t want to make you do anything you don’t want to do. We can look for another way. We will stick together, decide together.” Nevermind the fact that Aredhel isn’t sure there _is_ another way, or whether or not it will be just as dangerous as the one they had tried to avoid. “But I think we should follow Scout, if you feel up to it.”

She does not mention all of the good reasons for them to hasten; she does not want to push him. As it turns out, Aredhel doesn’t need to. Julian does it for her.

He swallows, passing a wary glance over her shoulder at the cave behind her. “That Magician fellow—he said Lucio has almost everyone he needs at the Masquerade to complete his plan. And when that happens…”

There is fear in his voice as it trails off. His magelight warbles, wanes. ‘ _He is so green with his magic,’_ Aredhel thinks, fondly, despite the circumstances. ‘ _As transparent as glass.’_

“There is so much at stake. Asra went back in such a hurry, and he didn’t say why—and Pasha is there, and Mazelinka, and Tilde, and Bartholomew...” Julian continues, and it is as if by naming his friends he draws courage from them. His voice becomes solid, less thin; his breathing calms.

“If we do nothing, the plague will come back, and they will all be in danger. Because of me. Because I was too afraid.”

“It isn’t your fault,” Aredhel says. “It’s no one’s fault but Lucio’s, for being such a slippery, slimy hagfish of a human being. But we can stop him.”

“He has your _body,_ ” Julian says, as if he is remembering it for the first time. His hands tighten on hers, as if to check that her form is still solid, not sublimating into something misty and ethereal as she had in the garden.

“I’ll snatch it back,” Aredhel says, as though it is as easy as pressing light between her palms. “He’s enough of a narcissist that I can be sure he is taking good care of it, anyway.” But her easy grin falls from her face as she holds Julian’s eyes; there is no hiding her concern, now that Julian has brought matters of the flesh to mind. Somberly, she adds, “I’m more worried about _your_ body.”

“Malak is a good bird,” Julian replies. Aredhel tries not to be too alarmed by the lack of concern in his voice. “I’m sure he won’t let Valdemar slice me up without a fight.”

Aredhel’s face twists as she fights her worry off of it. Darkly, she says, “I hope Malak pecks the Quaestor’s eyes out.”

“I doubt that would slow them down,” Julian says, his tone wry. “I bet Valdemar could still make their way around the dissection theatre, even blinded. But I trust Malak, and everyone else back at the party, to find way to keep my body safe.”

Then he sighs. “You’re right, though; we should still take the most direct route. Nadia, Asra… everyone is counting on us.” He leans in to steal a kiss with which to fortify himself, then turns back to the cave transformed, every line of his face drawn in determination, his magelight ablaze. The light catches on the remains of the sinister webs Scout had cleared, still gleaming like ghastly curtains on either side of the entrance.

“Alright, Aredhel,” Julian says, and takes a deep breath. “Let’s go.”

  
  


The entrance is too narrow for both of them to walk side by side. Julian insists on going first; this time, Aredhel lets him. She walks behind him and watches as he experiments with his magelight: he bounces it, colors it red, blue, then purple. He’s so preoccupied with the magic Aredhel fears he’ll trip himself over one of the rocks that snag out of the floor, but he never stumbles.

“That’s a bit of a silly color for the mood, isn’t it?” Julian asks himself under his breath, and Aredhel sees the light around him go bright pink. He laughs, lightly, and lifts the magelight to hang in the air a few feet above him.

The smell of rot had cleared from the air as soon as they had entered the cave; inside, the air is cool, and damp. Occasionally they stumble upon a cluster of mushrooms, but for the most part their progress is unremarkable. Scout is too far ahead for them to see her, and the tunnel often forks and branches off in many directions, but the path their guide has taken is clear, marked always by torn, glistening websilk. There is (as yet) no sign of the creature that wove it.

They descend deeper, beneath the cold rock and into the earth. Gradually the tunnel widens enough for Aredhel and Julian to walk side-by-side. She changes the color of her magelight to soft blue; it fills the tunnel with Julian’s, cheery pink and tranquil blue light, a calming lavender where they kiss. There is still little sign of Scout, but faintly, if Aredhel strains her ears, she can hear their guide tapping her walking stick ahead.

After some time, though, Aredhel can sense Jullian growing tense beside her—she doesn’t blame him. How long had they been walking in the dark? And with no indication that they would emerge any time soon. They have gone so far from warmth of the sunlight; the deeper they go, the colder the tunnels become. Aredhel shivers, her hair standing on end.

Julian takes note. He removes his jacket, and draws it over her shoulders. It still holds some of the heat of his body, and Aredhel relaxes into it, the disheveled feathers stroking her cheeks. She reaches between them to take Julian’s hand in hers.

“Tell me a story?” she asks, bumping her shoulder against his.  

Julian blinks in surprise, though he slips his hand into hers as naturally as he breathes. “A story?”

“You know, one of your stories, the ones you are always telling. From your travels.”

_‘Tell me a story, you are so good at it—distract us both, from the cold and from what we will find ahead.’_

Julian’s demeanor changes at once. His eyebrows lift, his mouth splits into a grin. How instantly he becomes roguish and charming! “Ohhh, _well_ , I have lots of stories, Aredhel. What would you like to hear about?” he asks, leaning towards her and peering eagerly into her face. “A daring escape? An exhilarating chase?”

Aredhel has something else in mind.

“Before, at the party—when you played the vielle? I loved that.”

As luck would have it, Julian _does_ stumble then, but Aredhel’s grip on his arm is firm enough to keep him upright. The cheerful colors of the magelights almost hide his blush entirely. “You did?”

“I did,” Aredhel says, squeezing his hand. “How did you learn? Who taught you?”

Julian smiles, and his magelight goes tangerine with the warmth of the memory that possesses him. “Oh, we have a long romance, the vielle and I. I told you about all the travelers in Nevivon? Well, let’s say I knew from a young age that I wanted to go see the places they told me about. That I wanted to see the world for myself, not just hear about it in stories.”

The tunnel widens, enough that Julian and Aredhel could stretch their arms to the side and still not touch the walls. The air is still, but it becomes fresher, less rank. Julian continues.

“But I knew… if I wanted to leave, the Grandmas couldn’t send me. They had enough to worry about as it was, looking after the other kids. I would need to save up, so I could pay my own way. And for that I needed to earn money.”

“I looked too young to get a job—even _after_ my growth spurt—but I had a plan. There was a widow who lived down the street from us—Irina Petrovna.” Julian’s smile softens, but the skin around his eyes tightens: a bittersweet smile, Full of affection, but tinged with sadness at a friendship lost. The light above Julian goldens, the space between his light and Aredhel’s bleeding a bright, spring green. “I used to hear her play sometimes, when Pasha and I were playing in the street. Irina played the vielle so very beautifully—people would walk by her house and hear her and _actually sigh,_ all wistful, like in some kind of novel.”

“Anyway, I got it in my head that I wanted to play the vielle as beautifully as Irina Petrovna, and I was very naive, and I thought this would be very easy.” He laughs at his own youthful naivety. “I would play drinking songs for coin down by the taverns, and sailor’s songs by the harbor, and folk songs in the market square. And in this way I would slowly save up enough money to purchase a very cheap fare on a merchant vessel.”

“So, every week, twice a week, I would run errands in the market for Irina. I saved my pennies to surprise her with _vatrushki_ from the baker’s stall every time I went to market for her.  I think that’s why she taught me, in the end—because even if I was a lost cause as a viellist, at least Irina was getting pastry for her trouble.”

“Irina Petrovna was a severe but adept tutor. When she was disappointed in me!” The grin on Julian’s face split in amazement, and his eyes sparkled. “When I hadn’t practiced, or I wasn’t playing my best, her disappointment was absolutely _crushing_. She wouldn’t say a word, she would only send me home, tell me to come back when I was ready to be serious. And I always did, back the next day with my tail between my legs, apologies on my lips, a basket of sour cherries as a peace offering. She’d hardly acknowledge I’d said anything at all before setting me back on my scales.”

“By the time I was about twelve I could play well enough by ear. I started busking, then, once I had a few crowd-pleasing tunes under my belt. The best spot to play was near the salt baths. Travelers tended to be in a generous mood, after a soak.”

A breeze—a draft of air from some hidden shaft—stirs from deep in the tunnel, gently brushing Julian’s curls back from his face. His magelight goes blue to match Aredhel’s, blue as the sky over the sea.

“Those are some of my best memories,” he says, quietly, voice thick with nostalgia. “The smell of salt in the air and the clink of coin in Irina’s vielle case, and every bit of it bringing me closer to the adventures I’d dreamed of since I was a kid. And all the travelers—there were a few rough ones, you know, who tried to tease me or whatever, call me a hick for playing folk songs, or try to size me up and see if they could steal from me, but nobody ever did. Nobody hurt me. They were just nice. They helped me get out.” Julian peers at her out of the corner of his eye, nudges her gently with his elbow. “Meet you, in the end.”

His face looks so at ease, his eyes soft and warm. He slows to a stop, only long enough to press a kiss to Aredhel’s temple before they continue into the tunnel.

“I hadn’t thought about that in a long time. Thank you for asking.”

Aredhel opens her mouth to reply, but a clattering in the distance—a skittering and very un-Scout-like noise—cuts her sentence off at the knees. Her words turn to dust in her mouth.

Aredhel goes very still; Julian moves. He winds his arms around her, pulling her into his embrace, peering into the darkness ahead of them. “Wh-what’s that?” he asks, his voice thin and chalky with barely leashed terror.

All at once, that awful smell is back: decay and sickness, dampness, rot. As Asra taught her, Aredhel counts her breaths, and tries to keep a level head.

“It’s nothing,” she tells Julian. She loops her arm around his waist but keeps her eyes fixed forward, trying to coax him further into the tunnel. “It can’t hurt us.”

She’s pretty sure that’s the case, anyway. She _mostly_ believes it. But what’s clear in her voice is the part that’s _un_ certain—the part that still does not know, really, _how_ they reached the forest floor safely, only that they did—and Julian picks up on it at once.

“What are you talking about?” Julian asks, his voice pitched with the slight warble of fear. “If it’s ‘ _nothing_ ,’ why did that need clarifying with ‘ _it can’t hurt us_ ?’ If it was really nothing, wouldn’t that be obvious?” 

In the darkness beyond the illumination of their magelight, something clicks, hisses. The tunnel fills with the echo of too many footfalls—too many legs.

“Oh no. Oh, Aredhel.”

Julian’s body seizes tight, torn between competing impulses. His eyes strain against the dark, trying to catch a glimpse of what moves in the shadows. Nothing catches the magelight, but the hiss-click-skittering grows louder.

Then, he is decided. “Get behind me,” Julian commands, placing his body between Aredhel’s and the tunnel ahead, shielding her from whatever is heading towards them.

Aredhel takes his shoulder in hand, squeezing it as she looks beyond Julian and into the dark. She can no longer hear Scout. She counts her breaths, draws them out. “Julian, stay calm—we have to think. We are not in the waking world; things work differently here—”

“Do you—you _must_ —please tell me you know a spell, or, or _something_ for whatever that is—!” 

But what kind of spell could Aredhel prepare against a faceless foe? Though she knows already what creeps towards them in the dark—how could she not? They had both seen the webs. Her dread sits heavy in her gut. The magelights flicker and dim. Aredhel can feel Julian trembling against her, but his feet are planted firmly beneath him, and he does not waver from his vigil before her, ready to defend her against whatever horror the shadows are about to disgorge.

It emerges with the slow, confident gait of a predator. The color and exuberance drains from Julian’s magelight. It goes pale blue, and catches on thick, coarse hair—haired legs. Each straight, striped hair looks at least as long as Aredhel’s forearm. One leg after the other stretches into the tunnel, into the dulling light, tugging a great and hideous body along behind them. Eight wet, beady eyes reflect back the magelight as tiny pinpricks in their inky blackness.

The air becomes so foul Aredhel must fight the urge to retch.

“Damn it, Aredhel! I knew it. I knew it would be dangerous down here.” Julian pitches his voice low, a hissing whisper, as though he fears that if he raises his voice he will provoke the creature. His hand finds hers, and begins to loosen the grip of her fingers on his shoulder.

“Aredhel, you have to let go of me,” he insists, still working free of her grip. “Then you run, you find Scout, you get out of here. I’ll hold that—that _thing_ back as long as I can, but you have to go _right now._ “

“Absolutely not,” Aredhel says. “I didn’t leave you in the library, I did not leave you to hang, I’m certainly not going to leave you now.”

_She_ had talked him into following Scout; if they are trapped, now, it is her fault. She will not flee and leave Julian to face some terrible fate, to suffer for her mistake. But even now, with the spider measuring them with its many-eyed gaze and her heart pounding so loud and so violently she can barely hear herself think, a part of her stubbornly refuses to admit it had been a mistake at all.

In her mind Aredhel runs through the defensive spells she knows, fires that might be called upon to frighten the beast back, to buy time if nothing else. But when they had tumbled off the edge of the Magician’s realm, her magic had been useless. Aredhel fears: will she be as powerless here as she was then, tumbling through the air?

For all her talk of cables and harnesses, Aredhel had been unable to slow their fall in the slightest, but it _had_ slowed, nonetheless, and this had saved them from turning to jam when they met the forest floor. ‘ _That was not my magic. Was it yours?_ _Or something else?_ ’

“ _Think of light._ ”

A mad thought takes her. She tightens her grip on Julian’s shoulder and turns him to face her too abruptly for him to resist. She holds him steady, one hand on each shoulder so he cannot turn to face the advancing arachnid behind him.

“Ilya. Do you trust me?”

“What are you—”

“Please trust me. Just look at me, Julian.” She releases his shoulder and slips her palm flat over his sternum, as she had in her bedroom at the palace. “Breathe with me.” Pointedly, unwaveringly, she stares into his eyes instead of those of the monstrosity beyond.

The spider clicks its mandibles, takes a few steps closer; Julian hears it advancing. He shudders, and turns to glance behind him, but Aredhel does not let him. She takes his face in her hands and kisses his cheek roughly, before she throws her arms around his neck, pulling him tightly against her, leaving him no room to look back.

Still, Julian whispers in her ear, his voice panicked: “You have to let me go. Please, Aredhel. If something happens to you, if you get hurt—!”

“Nothing is going to happen to us,” Aredhel says, her voice steel-sure. Her hands tighten their hold in his jacket. “We are stronger together. We are sticking together—that’s what we agreed on. That’s how it’s going to be from here on.”

In the tunnel ahead, the spider’s eye shine with a cold curiosity. What is this creature, Aredhel wonders, and whose realm is it lurking in? The stare it favors her with is intelligent, almost shrewd.

Aredhel locks eyes with it, and continues. “We will make it out the other side of this tunnel. You’ll laugh about it when it’s over. It will just become another one of your stories to tell, over drinks or card games in warm taverns.”

Julian sighs; the sound of it is tight and apprehensive. But he eases into Aredhel’s arms, some of the tension leaving his body, though he holds her no less closely. His fingers thread in her hair. Behind him, the spider ceases its advance, stops cold in its tracks.  

Aredhel’s heart skips a beat.

“Julian, I think this is just another test, like in the Tower.”  Aredhel tells him, rushing over her words like a river over stones. “I have an idea, I just need you to _trust me_ , Julian, please.”

He resists: against the shell of her ear, he whispers, “I knew we should not have followed the dog.” But then he sags against her ( _his_ lighthouse, house of light, home of warmth; she guides him back) and he puts his faith in her:

“I trust you. Of course I trust you.”

Behind him, Aredhel watches the spider twitch. Three of eight legs draw back into the passage it had emerged from; its great body recedes with them. But it has not yet lost interest in them wholly, and it keeps its eyes trained on them. Aredhel’s brow sets in determination, and her love burns in her breast like a forest on fire.

“It’s not like it’s was before,” she tells Julian, “when you felt like had look out for everyone else. You deserve to be looked after, too. We jumped together, right? We are in this together, no matter what.”

Julian does not reply, but his breathing slows. Aredhel’s doesn’t. She keeps her eyes trained on the spider, watches as it crawls back into the tunnel, leg by hideous leg, and dares not even breath.

“I am here,” she says, brushing her lips against Julian’s neck. “I am with you. I’m not going anywhere.”

The colored magelights blanch; the room is filled with white as bright as daylight. A high pitched bark of alarm and warning echoes through the chamber. Out of nowhere Scout reappears, bounding towards them. In no time at all, she puts herself between the spider and her human wards.

Scout waves her walking stick at the great beast (more scoldingly than menacingly, Aredhel thinks, though that makes little sense) and the spider hisses in answer. Scout barks again. A trick of the light, Aredhel’s eyes still adjusting to the brightness—she would almost swear the spider ducks its head like an admonished child, before it skulks back into the shadows.

The tunnels quiet.

Aredhel loosens her grip on Julian’s shoulders; he pulls away, blinking as his eyes adjust to the bright light. Scout stands before them, paws on her hips. She gives them the very same shake-of-the-stick Aredhel had seen her give to that awful spider, then beckons them further into the tunnel with no small amount of impatience.

When Julian finally speaks his voice is incredulous. “I’ll be the first to admit it: I may have been wrong about Scout. She really saved our hides back there.”

But Aredhel is not so sure. Julian had not seen it, facing away, but the spider had begun to retreat before Aredhel had seen any sign of Scout. Aredhel doesn’t think Scout ‘ _saved their hides’_ at all.

  


 

Ahead, the cave begins to lighten. It’s subtle, at first, but soon there’s no longer a need for their  magelights. Aredhel winks them out: Julian smiles as they shrink then shower down upon the two of them in a soft rain of luminescent grains. They catch on his eyelashes before they dim; when he smiles, bits of bright blue like starstrand frame his grey eyes, and he looks so beautiful Aredhel feels nearly wounded at the sight.

‘ _How easily he smiles. As if he has not just offered—again—to die for me.’_

Soon the cave narrows; they are forced to go single file again. Julian follows Scout, with Aredhel bringing up the rear. As the tunnel lightens she watches a golden halo of daylight kiss Julian’s silhouette, growing brighter and more vibrant until his curls are a fiery corona and the tunnel ends and opens to the sky.

The tunnel deposits them on a high shelf, near the peak of a tall mountain. Funny—Aredhel does not remember their path climbing upwards. The forest stretches below them, a green carpet in the valley, and beyond the forest a sea glitters gold in the light of a setting sun. Beyond the sea—a lighthouse, the very same one Aredhel had glimpsed during their fall. Aredhel does not know what they will find there, but she is certain that is their goal.

There is no discernible path down the mountainside, but Scout appears unperturbed. Their guide pulls off her pack and sits comfortably on a nearby boulder to wait—for what, Aredhel knows not. Neither does this predicament seem to bother Julian. The sound he makes coming out of the tunnel is nearly a sob, and after he takes his first breath of fresh air, he laughs, brightly.

“We made it after all! How about that. And just in time for sunset.” His smile falters only slightly, the faintest flicker of confusion dimming it’s shine. “Though, that doesn’t seem quite right. It doesn’t feel like we were down there _that_ long. But I suppose it’s hard to tell in the dark.”

“I don’t think we _were_ down there that long,” Aredhel muses, coming up alongside him to take in the view. “Time is different here.”

“Right. Magic world.” The curve of his smile wobbles. He passes a glance at Scout. “Well, our friend doesn’t seem terribly hurried. Magic or not, why don’t we make the most of it?”

Without further ado he drops to the bare rock shelf underneath him. Once he’s settled he looks up at Aredhel with a winning smile, the planes of his face catching the fading light, patting the ground beside him in invitation. Aredhel pauses only divest herself of his jacket, draping it over his shoulders once more before she steps between his legs and drops to the ground between them.

Julian hums. His warm lips vibrate with delight against the back of her neck. It feels so good to be held by him; Aredhel’s body relaxes at once, melting into his embrace. The wind whistles its way up the mountain, but the breeze it stirs is warm, and fragrant with pine from the trees below.

Aredhel’s keeps her eyes on the sunset, but she knots her fingers with Julian’s and raises his hand to her face, pressing a kiss to the back of it.

“Are you alright, Julian?”

Julian’s arms tighten around her. “Me? I’m grand, I’m...” _lying._ He’s putting on a brave face, but he can’t hide from her, and he knows it. Aredhel can feel his unease in his angles, his muscles; she can feel the budding confession on his lips in the way he kisses her cheek, as though with each brush of his lips against her skin he is gathering his bravery, gleaning the words. Aredhel does not push him; Julian will say his piece when he is ready. But as she watches the sun disappear below the island on the horizon, she traces patterns on his forearm, her silent sign that she is listening.

Finally, Julian sighs. “I’m not… I’m not being very helpful, am I?” His words fall soft and warm on her ear. “You have to know, Aredhel, back in the tunnel… it isn’t that I don’t trust _you_. It’s really that I don’t trust myself.”

Aredhel leans back to kiss whatever skin she can reach—she brushes her mouth against the underside of his jaw to soothe him, to reassure him—before settling comfortably back into his arms. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t understand how the rules work here, Aredhel. I want to believe you when you tell me we are safe—I do.” Julian’s shuddering exhale condenses against her collar, leaves it damp. “But if anything had happened to you—if I had not done everything I could to keep you safe—I would never be able to forgive myself.”

_‘Oh, Julian.’_

Does he think she does not worry about him? Her concern is the cause for her haste—already they have dallied too long. Her heart pounds at the thought: _Valdemar has his body_ . Who _knows_ what has been done with him, to him—whether or not Julian even has a body to go back to, now.

...And if he does? With Lucio back, the plague will follow. For the very first time, Aredhel looks at Julian’s red-stained eye with fear.

“You must think I’m a real coward, I bet,” Julian adds, interrupting her thoughts. “To see me so frightened, after all my crowing and boasting.”

Aredhel breaks their entanglement.  She sits up and turns in his arms, and _oh,_ isn’t he a sight? The sunlight painting his face in soft pinks and oranges, his hair blazing. His grey eyes smolder like coals. Touching his cheek feels like touching a painting.

“No,” she says, shaking her head for emphasis. “No, I think you are brave. But living for something is harder than dying for it.” She adds, more quietly, “I don’t want you to die for me, Julian.”

She frames Julian’s face with her palms. He looks so piteous, so raw. The Tower had not tested him as arduously as this.

“I know it must be hard,” Aredhel tells him. “You spent three years looking for your death, thinking you might never find it—by now it is habit for you, to go rushing towards it. But the way I feel about you, the way we feel about each other—it is not a fire to throw yourself upon.” She takes his hands. “If you want fight, then I will be beside you. I’ll poke out all eight of a giant spider’s eyes with my bare fingers if I have no other weapon. If you want to flee, I’ll run with you, fast as our feet will carry us. But we go together. We don’t leave each other behind.”

Julian shakes his head. “The way you feel about me… I don’t deserve it.”

“No, you deserve much more than that,” Aredhel retorts. “But I cannot give it to you here—it will have to wait until we get back home.”

Her words, heartfelt as they are, do little to brighten Julian’s mood. She aches to see him so down. She longs to comfort him, distract him—her mind catches a glimmer of mischief, and she must fight to keep her knowing smile off her face. With affected solemnity, she lifts her hands to his chest, pressing her fingers against his collarbone.

“Let me take your despair out of you.”

Julian’s eyes widen. “Wh—ahh, what now?”

“It’s an old darach trick. Family magic,” Aredhel explains, but her voice stays low and serious. Her hands slide from collar to pelvis, creep under his shirt to press against the skin of his abdomen. “Ancient magic.”

“Uhh, why are— _hah_ , your hands are cold!”

“Shh, shush.”

Aredhel kneels in front of Julian, her hands on his waist, her eyes fixed on his. “Breathe,” she implores him. But when he does—when his chest expands and his skin fits into her grip—she can no longer keep the smile off her face— _cover blown!_ —and hastily slides her hands to his sides where she knows he is most ticklish.

The first touch has Julian laughing, twisting away from her. “Traitor!” he croaks weakly through his laughter. At the sight of him smiling, shaking with his laughter, Aredhel relents—Julian gets his arms around her drags her to the ground, before pinning her neatly beneath him, her wrists in his hands.

His chest still shakes with his laughter. But he’s lying between Aredhel’s legs, and as his laughter fades his eyelids lower, and in the shadow of his laughter lurks a ravenous grin. Never breaking from her eyes, Julian lowers, presses his lips to the underside of her jaw then draws his mouth down her throat, nipping along her skin with his teeth. When he releases his grip on her wrists to hook his fingers into the collar of her dress, pulling it aside to continue his descent, Aredhel closes her eyes. She arches off the dirt and the hard rock and into his touch.

“Hruff!”

Aredhel is half-tempted to ignore their guide, to keep herself pressed to Julian, to let him kiss her and croon in his ear all the while about the strange and magnificent feelings he awakens in her. But when Scout calls a second time— _“hruff!”—_ sounding more impatient than the first, Aredhel opens her eyes, and turns her head to the side. A smile splits her face; she takes Julian’s shoulder in hand, shaking it, trying to get his attention.

“Julian, look!”

Hovering beside their mountain shelf are two massive manta rays, sleek as kites, with skin of royal purple and robin’s egg blue. Their fins ripple easily in the breeze; they make flying look effortless.

“Incredible!” Julian manages once he pulls himself from her neck, slack-jawed and wide-eyed. “ _Impossible_.”

“Come on,” Aredhel beckons, rising to her feet and pulling him up after her. As they rise, the larger ray approaches them. It circles them, watching them curiously; cautiously, Julian reaches out to touch it, and when his fingertips finally find the finely grained texture of its back, he laughs in delight.

(Another thing she loves about Julian: his seemingly bottomless capacity for delight, even in the darkest of moments, even when things look bleak. His laughter rings as clear as crystal.)

The manta ray echoes the sound, a comforting little coo that Aredhel feels more than she hears, a trill of excitement and curiosity reverberating in the air between them. It spins onto its back, hovering in the air with its blue belly pointing moonward. The skin of its stomach shines, iridescent in the night; Julian reaches for it, patting its stomach gently.

“Who’s a good sea pancake?” Aredhel hears him murmur, and the ray coos again, as if it agrees. _Yes, I am the best sea pancake, and I’m here to bear you on my back like syrup on flapjacks._

Because that (it becomes clear) are what the rays are here to do: already Scout has climbed atop the first, and the ray has left the cliff’s edge, carrying their guide gently towards the edge of the forest, near the seashore.

“Look,” Aredhel says, placing her hand gently on Julian’s shoulder and pointing out over the trees. “I think we’re meant to ride them.”

Julian grins brilliantly. “Oh, is that so?” He smooths his hands down the manta ray’s stomach a few more times. “Does she have it right, buddy? Are you going to carry us down?”

The ray trills again, and rights itself. It spreads its fins as far as they will stretch, and holds them straight, a silent invitation for the two of the to climb aboard.

“Well, can’t argue with that,” Julian says, cheerily, and offers his arm to Aredhel. “After you, darling.”

Aredhel worries about climbing onto the creature—what if they are too heavy? What if she steps on it the wrong way and hurts it?—and she clutches Julian’s arm tightly, but the ray holds her weight, and she lowers herself flat onto its back. Julian follows suit, but he barely climbs aboard before the ray (enthusiastic, eager to please) launches off the cliff.

Julian lets loose a whoop of delight; for the second time, Aredhel clutches his clothes in her fingers, pulling him tight against her as the ray soars down the purple mountainside. They fly so close to the treetops Aredhel thinks she could reach out and touch them if she wanted; instead, she keeps one hand wrapped tightly around the ray’s fin, and the other fisted in Julian’s clothes.

But Julian has no fear of falling. He grins in the last light of the setting sun. This time, when he shouts, she can hear him: “ _This is brilliant!_ ” Brilliant as it is, though—the glittering sea, the lighthouse shining in the deepening darkness—he still spares a moment to kiss her, pressing his mouth to her cheek before he pulls her against him and watches the forest thin below them until there is nothing but surf and sand. The ray banks sharply to the left, and they begin their descent.

  


 

The wind whips fiercely at the water, so strong and turbulent their manta ray struggles to land. Once it does they scramble quickly off of its back. Julian gives it a last fond pat goodbye; Aredhel can just hear it coo faintly over the wind sound before it peels away from the beach and back towards the mountain tops, where the bright underbellies of it’s school shine against the stars.

Only when the manta ray has gone does Aredhel turn to face the dock, where Scout stands, waiting; when she does, her heart sinks.

At the end of the dock she can make out the mast of a small sailboat. A seaworthy craft, maybe—let Julian be the judge of that. But the lighthouse has receded to a mere pinprick of light across the water, and the sea they must cross churns and froths riotously. A violent tumult—too much, Aredhel thinks, for their little boat to weather.

“I have a bad feeling about this, Aredhel.” His earlier gaiety— _‘who’s a good sea pancake?’_ —has gone out of his voice entirely.

But Aredhel is hardly listening to him. The sea had not looked nearly so violent from the mountains above. Now it gnashes, thrashes; waves pummel one another. She thinks of the spider, the fall from the beach; she takes one step, then two more, not towards the dock but the shore where sand and sea meet. The tide foams white, rushes in and out and over itself like Mercedes and Melchior at play with each other.

“Aredhel? Where are you going?”

Aredhel looks down. All along the shore, the tide races… but when she steps into the sea, one foot after the other, the water around her calms.

And that’s… _something_ , must mean something, some hint or clue, but Julian is at her side before Aredhel can consider it, or unravel it.

“You’re not seriously thinking we can cross that?” Julian asks her, his voice wary. “I know—I heard what you said, I’m not offering to go off on my own. I don’t want to go out on it—I don’t want you to, either—but really, I don’t think we _can._ That water is way too rough. We’ll capsize—while we’re still close enough to maybe fight our way back to shore, if we’re lucky. Otherwise we’ll drown.”

_‘We won’t drown,’_ Aredhel thinks, remembering the Hanged Man’s realm, Asra’s words of guidance. She had not drowned among the mangroves because she had _believed_ she did not needed to breathe. The realms of the Arcana were malleable.

And it clicks, then. She knows what this is.

Not a test for her. It’s for him.

_‘How do we stop him?’ Hard as a diamond, all the life and magic in her crushed into this one immutable desire: to see Lucio stopped before his selfishness could swallow the city a second time, before his greed and incompetence could claim the lives of more innocents, of people Aredhel loved. But the fox-headed Magician had only smiled at her, his gaze sliding from her eyes to Julian’s. ‘You can’t. Not as you are. Not yet.’_

And she knows, too, what it must mean. One realization leads to another, dominoes carved from bone knocking one another down in a pale row: why Julian is being tested, what he is being prepared for, what he must become. Aredhel’s heart aches, not for herself but for him.

But he is— _they_ are—not ready, not yet, and if Julian must ‘ _become_ ’ he will not have to do it alone. Aredhel will stand by his side; she will hold his hand, for as long as she can. Better for him to learn the lesson kindly, if it can be taught that way.

Down further along the beach, among the rocky coves and water-smooth pebbles, the barking of seal pups draws Arehel’s attention from the dock, the water, the sailboat, the lighthouse—though she does not, even for a second, forget them. “Why don’t we go sit for a bit?” she asks Julian. “See if the sea calms any.”

Julian looks at her with skepticism, as if to say that a few minutes won’t change the sea’s mood, and he _knows_ so because of his days as a “captive physician.” But doubtful though he may be, that doubt is far outweighed by Julian’s reluctance to try crossing the water. He accepts Aredhel’s suggestion without fight; together, they walk down the shore.

The seals are spotted in the same purple and blue as the manta rays, and their slick wet skin glimmers as though their coats are decorated with stardust. One of the pups drags itself over the sand and greets them with a bark. Julian bends at the waist immediately, reaching to pat it fondly on the head, whispering some low praise and encouragement under his breath.

For all his reluctance, he seems to Aredhel’s eyes pleased to have the distraction. But this time, as much as she wishes she could, she can’t let him stay that way. She had brought him here to talk to him, and if she’s right about what’s coming, it is important that she not wait.

“You’ve been different, since you came back,” she says to the back of his head, as he lavishes the seal pup in affection and attention. “You used to love a bit of trouble—a bit of danger.”

Julian’s posture goes rigid at once, struck still at her comment. He takes a trembling breath. When he releases it, instead of turning to face her, he crouches and pretzels his legs, reaching out for the seal pup. Easily encouraged, it begins to shuffle towards him.

“That was before, when I still had the Hanged Man’s blessing,” Julian says, though he does not look at her. How curious—now that it is gone, his mark is no longer a ‘gift’ or a ‘curse,’ but has been bestowed the lofty descriptor of _‘blessing_ ’ instead. “Before, I could keep you safe. Now I can’t. And on top of that, I’ve recently remembered that three years ago I failed so miserably at keeping you safe, you ended up dead.”

The seal pup shuffles right up to Julian’s thigh. It snuffles at his trousers, takes them between its lips (but not its teeth) for a curious taste before it abandons the fabric. Its eyes close in contentment as Julian scratches its head at the base of its skull, between its ears.

Still, Julian will not look at her, so Aredhel knees in the sand beside him. Either he does not see her drop, or he does not acknowledge her; either way, she reaches for his free hand (she would not deprive the pup of its pats, nor Julian of the comfort such petting provides him) and takes it in hers.

“Julian, what happened to me is not your fault.”

That catches his attention. The scratching of his fingers slows to a stop. He releases the seal, and turns to face her… he has only ever looked this wretched was when he imprisoned beneath the Coliseum, when he had begged her not to go to Valdemar’s laboratory. As then, his mouth is a twisted line; his eyes are wide and full of fear.

“What happened to me is not your fault,” Aredhel repeats, reaching out to hold his face so that he cannot turn away. “And whatever happens to me, you are not to blame for that, either. And none of that changes the way that I feel about you.”

“That’s the point, isn’t it? The way I feel about you.” His gaze is intense. There’s an urgency behind it, a gathering panic. “If I lost you now… if I lost you _again_ , I don’t know what would become of me.”

“You shouldn’t talk like that,” Aredhel says, shaking her head. “I’m not the only one who cares about you, Julian. _If_ something happened to me—and that’s a big ‘if,’” she adds, and flashes a self-assured grin, “they would help you. It would be difficult, maybe. But you heard Portia: I am not the only one who loves you, and those who love you would look after you in your grief until you could look after yourself.”

Hands seek hands. She squeezes his gently. “Will you come with me?”

Julian hesitates, then nods. He turns only to give the seal pup one final scritch behind his ears before he and Aredhel rise together. She guides him to the shore, to the tide. “Look at our feet.”

He does. Below, the tide rushes in and out, as volatile as it had appeared from the docks. But around Aredhel, where the water soaks her skirt, the sea is still as a pond.

“Huh,” Julian manages, brow knitting in confusion. “How… uh, what is that? I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

“You tell me. You’re the man of science.”

He scowls. “Aredhel, I wouldn’t exactly call this…” he begins, but then the sourness leaves his face, and Aredhel can see him thinking. “Well, you’re doing something to it—to the water. In a narrow radius, anyway. But it won’t be enough for the boat.”

As during their fall, as in the cave with the spider, Aredhel thinks, ‘ _It’s not me._ ’

“I have a theory,” Aredhel says, but her voice carries a note of hesitance. She does not expect Julian to take it well. “We’re in the realms of the Arcana, Julian. Things here… they’re malleable. Remember the Hanged Man’s realm? I believed I didn’t have to breathe, so I didn’t. And you’re a magic user, so these worlds respond to you, too, now.”

Aredhel takes a deep breath. “I think… all of it—the sea, the spider, the speed of our fall—I think those things were brought on by you. Specifically when you most feared I was in danger.”

Julian’s mouth falls open, aghast. “Are you saying I’m _meaning_ to make the sea look like that? That it’s my fault?”

“There is no ‘fault,’” Aredhel is quick to assert. “You saved us, too. When we slowed down, it was when I finally got my arms around you. When we were in the cave, the spider left before Scout even showed up, because you believed in me. Had faith in me. Julian, I think the Arcana is trying to tell you something. This fear you have of losing me… you have to let go of it.”

By now, Julian has turned to look at her. He stares—and if he looked wretched before, it is much worse now. He looks utterly hopeless. His eyes are watering, and the line of his mouth—lips seamed—quivers. He shakes his head.

“I can’t. I refuse.”

“Ilya.”

“ _No,_ ” Julian says, shaking his head. His despair turns him ugly; his forehead knits, his brows fretting together, lining his skin. “You can swear up and down that it was not my fault you died—let’s say you’re right. It is still my fault that I was not there to care for you, when you passed. That I did not say goodbye to you. That I let those animals _burn you alive—_ ”

Aredhel takes his head as guides it to hers, kissing their brows together. His cheeks are wet. His breath trembles.

“If I am not always looking out for you,” Julian whispers in the space between them, his fear pitching his voice high and uneven, “how can I be sure that I won’t fail you again?”

“You didn’t fail me.” Aredhel cups his neck with her hands, her thumbs flat against the tendon that runs from his clavicle to his ear, the place he so loves to be kissed. “It wasn’t even you—it was someone dead. We’ve both died, now, and let all that die with us. We are brand new, all-over-again.”

‘ _And I love you,_ ’ Aredhel thinks, though the words get stuck in her throat before they reach her tongue.

But “please,” comes easy, “trust me, too. Have faith in me. In us.” She brushes her nose against his, and when Julian’s eyelids flutter she feels them, soft and damp against her face. “We do things together now. Together we are strong.”

His mouth tastes salty like the sea when he kisses her. The wind comes howling off the water, ripping at their clothes, and no matter how fiercely or hungrily Julian kisses her, it does not abate.

Not until he releases her mouth, and begs her, “then let us stay here. Together.”

Then, the world quiets.

Aredhel draws back. “What are you talking about?”

Julian puts on a brave face, but his eyes plead with her. “You said it yourself. By now who even knows if I... if I have a body to go back to. And even if we _get_ back, that’s no guarantee you’ll be safe…” 

The pitch of his panic rises; Julian searches her eyes for any sign of hope, any hint that he might convince her. He does not find it.

Failing that, he drops to his knees, kneeling in the surf. His pants go damp with the tide. Later they’ll crust with the salt, the stiff fabric sparkling in the light. His eyes gleam. He takes both her hands together between his, and a calm overtakes him. A serene smile lifts his mouth.

(Aredhel cannot recall the first years of their past together, but she is fairly certain he has never begged her for anything like this before.)

“I will build you a house from the trees,” Julian tells her, dreamily. “I will hew the wood myself. You said you could renounce the need to breathe; perhaps we would not have to eat. _We could stay here_ .” He takes her hands and presses them to his face, kissing each of her her knuckles before he tilts his face back up to her. “If it is golden wheat you want, then I will find a way to sow it. I will practice my magic until I can enchant to life all of the flowers of your garden, and then I will invent my own. I will find a way to create beauty around you. And we could stay here on this beach, where there is no plague, and where your flesh has not been stolen from you—where Lucio cannot touch you, cannot even _look_ at you. And we could watch the seals grow up, and savor every oddly-timed sunset, and I would hold you close and love you until the end of the world.”

But Aredhel does not think the trees would deign to be hewn. She does not know if the seal pups ever _will_ grow up.

She cannot bear the way Julian is looking at her.

Careful not to trip over her skirt, Aredhel joins him in the surf. The water splashes against her dress; it is so thick with ornamentation that she can barely feel the chill of it through the fabric.

“That is not our life,” she tells him, as gently as she can. “I will give you a better one—one you deserve. Do you remember that night, on the docks?”

Julian’s smile fades, turns wistful. “It feels so far away,” Julian says. “I was a fool, then. Still am, I suppose.”

“Do you remember when I asked you to imagine our life together?”

Julian pauses, the nods. “Yes.” He had imagined for her a life of freedom, contentment. ‘ _Warm laughter, light hearts. Never a dull night._ ’

“Will you do it again for me now?”

Julian sighs. “Aredhel.”

“Please,” she implores, punctuating her request with a gentle squeeze of her hand around his. “Close your eyes. Breathe.” After a look of uncertainty, Julian obeys; his eyes slip closed, and his breathing slows, and deepens.

“When we get out of here,” Aredhel says, “and we get our bodies back, and stop Lucio and the plague both—what then, when the work is done?”

“You keep saying ‘ _when,_ ’ but I think you mean ‘ _if.’”_

“Please, Julian?”

Again he sighs, haggard and defeated. But he quiets. The anxiety smooths away from his face a little more with each steady breath, and he answers, “Autumn comes.”

“The leaves won’t change in Vesuvia; it is too warm for that. But just like the forests in the south, the city will golden for us. We’ll help Nadia get the city back on its feet: fix the flooded district, reopen the parks and public squares that Lucio closed. Dinners with Portia and Mazelinka. Nights in the Raven.” Julian’s eyes are still closed, imagining, but a soft smile curves his lips. “And when we have time to ourselves, I will show you all my favorite parts of the city, all the places that were too risky to visit before, when I was on the run. The hidden corners where street musicians play. My favorite beach for swimming.” With a quirked brow, and a mischievous tone, he adds, “and my favorite beach for skinnydipping.”

The smile turns to something wistful, rich with longing. Julian’s grip in Aredhel’s hands tightens. The winds comes in off the water just like that night on the docks. The same stars hang in the same patterns in the sky above them.

“And then… we ride the last of the trade winds out of the city’s harbor, and I show you everything you wanted to see, all the places I promised to take you three years ago. Hjallnir and Nevivon, the colored night sky of Chanadalar.”

Julian’s eyes open and burn with a promise, an oath he carries in him like a flame. “And in all of these places I will dedicate every day to making you smile,” he says, and though his voice grows unsteady his eyes do not waver from hers, “and when I have made myself worthy I will ask you to be my wife, Aredhel Mooney. And if you accept, we will have a mad and impossible life, and I will make love to you under of the skies of all these cities, our skin soaking up all the starlight we can touch.”

Julian’s face blurs before her; Aredhel’s vision only clears when she pulls away her hand to wipe the tears from her eyes. As soon as she can see him she folds his hands between hers again.

“We’re going to have that,” Aredhel whispers. “And when you ask me to wife I will say yes, and I will wreathe you in a garland of oak leaves, and declare my heart to be yours alone. As it is, already.”

“It will be hard,” she tells him, because she knows it will be. Whatever waits at the top of the lighthouse, or beyond the sea, or back at the Masquerade—Aredhel knows here (with the same certainty with which she reads the Arcana) that what comes next will be difficult. “But the best things in life do not come easy—you have to fight for them. We will be brave.” She kisses her cheek to his, breathing the smell of him, her lips close to his ear. “I can be brave, because you are with me.”

Julian shudders, then turns his head. He wraps his arms around her as their mouths come together. The surf splashes merrily against them, the tide crashing against their legs and their waists, sea spray settling in their hair in wet beads that catch the moonlight. The wind turns balmy and pleasant, as warm as Julian’s mouth, as his breath on her cheek. “You make me brave,” Julian tells her between open-mouthed kisses. “You make me better. I will fight for that life with you with everything I have.”

He keeps his lips close to her ear, holds her tight to him. When he releases her it is with a soft, curious sound of surprise; the sea has gone still as glass. It reflects a perfect facsimile of the stars and the moon, and turns all that they can see into a void of brilliant, light-studded purple, interrupted only by the column of the lighthouse on the horizon: orange against the night, a pillar of warmth calling them forward.

Aredhel kisses Julian’s jaw, then takes his hand to help him back into his feet. “Come on,” she says, and rises, the sea water dripping from her dress like jewels. “We’re almost at the end, I think.”

  


 

The sea is wide, but Julian—“captive physician” that he claims to have been—unfurls the sails of their vessel, and ties the rigging with expert, practiced hands, and the sail catches a vivacious wind. The boat speeds across the water, forest and mountains and beach all falling away in the boat’s wake.

Scout sits at the prow of the boat, alert, her eyes trained on the approaching shore. In the back Julian keeps one arm wound around the tiller, holding it steady. The other he keeps wrapped around Aredhel.

His body is warm against hers. For the most part he keeps his eyes trained on the sea ahead of them, but every so often Aredhel catches Julian glancing at her with a look she cannot read. It’s warm and withholding all at once.

“What is it?”

She cannot see the blush in Julian’s cheeks but she can feel its heat. Bashfully, he ducks his head to press a kiss to her cheek. “If we had more time… but it will have to wait, now, until we get back. But when we do, _ohohoho..._ ”

Julian leans close. Aredhel can feel his arm around her waist, his strong thigh flush against hers, and his lips brushing her ear he whispers to her all the things he is going to do to her with his tongue, and just how slowly he is going to do them; of the unhurried pace with which he will press into her, but only after she begs him. “Julian, Scout can probably hear you,” hear all the filthy promises he makes that warm and pool between her hips, but “I don’t care,” Julian tells her. His hand palms down her side, along her breast. Aredhel does not mind. Julian holds her, and Aredhel feels her body tightening deliciously, her ears burning with the heat in his words. “I’m going to take my time,” Julian whispers. “You will beg me to let you come, before the end. More than once, maybe.”

A shudder runs through Aredhel’s body. “You’ve never been one for teasing before,” she tells him, meaning to goad him, but the words come out more like a plea.

“ _Darling_ ,” Julian calls her, “every other time we’ve been together I’ve been worried about getting caught: by Nadia, by Portia, by the city guard.” She can feel the shape of his grin against her ear, lascivious. “But if I’m not mistaken, back at the castle, you have a room with a door and a lock... I can take my time—I’ve never had that before.” His voice lowers to a purr as he squeezes her waist:

“You have no idea what I’m capable of.”

...Aredhel very much looks forward to finding out. But before she can ask him to elaborate, Julian kisses her cheek with maddening innocence. The shore, once distant, approaches; they are close enough that she can begin to make out the texture of the lighthouse’s bricks. Julian releases Aredhel’s waist, and steps out from behind her to adjust the sails, slowing the speed of their boat as they come up on the dock.

 

 

 

Julian moors the boat expertly, then climbs up onto the dock and offers his hand to Aredhel. Scout jumps onto the wooden planks of the dock beside them, but does not rise to her feet; she settles on the wood, dangling her legs over the water, and waves to them to go on without her. Aredhel had said, ‘ _ we are almost at the end, I think _ .’ Now, leaving Scout behind, she is sure of it.

Dawn cracks the purple sky, pale streaks of blue and yellow that herald the coming light. Julian remarks, with no small degree of fascination, that the sun is rising in the very same direction it had set in. The pink brick of the lighthouse blushes coral in the early morning warmth.

“It’s just like the one in Nevivon,” Julian tells Aredhel, wonder in his voice. “It looks just as I remember. I never thought I’d see it again.” But immediately after he realizes his mistake; he frowns, and adds, “Though of course this isn’t really the same lighthouse. If it was, you’d be able to see the whole city from here, laid out around the harbor. And the sun would not rise from that direction.”   
  
Aredhel does not tell Julian that she thinks it no coincidence. She thinks it far more likely the lighthouse was put here  _ for him _ , but she keeps those thoughts to herself. After all, a lighthouse can be many things at once. It warns of treacherous waters; it guides the way to port. For Julian, the lighthouse lit the way for the travelers that visited his first home, filling his ears with stories of the sea and the worlds across it, feeding the wanderlust in his heart. Beginnings and endings, arrivals and departures: the lighthouse brought to Nevivon the same stories that would one day inspire Julian to leave.

But Aredhel says none of this; instead, she smiles at him. “You see it again—the real one. We’ll see it, soon. When all of this is through.”   
  
That’s enough to brighten his mood. “I can’t wait to show it to you,” he grins, pausing mid-stride to press a quick kiss to her cheek. Then he turns his eyes ahead of him, and gestures dramatically forward. “For now, though—this imposter. Shall we?”   
  
They find the door at the base of the lighthouse unlocked. Beyond the threshold, a spiral staircase winds its way upwards, around the tower. The stairs are steep and narrow; grains of sand from the shore collect in their creases. Once more they must go single file; Julian insists that Aredhel go first. 

“After you, darling.”

“Are you worried that I’m going to trip in my party shoes,” Aredhel asks, teasing him, “and you will have to catch me?”

“Hey now! That’s not the only reason,” Julian replies with a cheeky grin. “I also find the view from the rear to be much improved.”

Aredhel rolls her eyes, favors him with a warm smile even as she swats at his shoulder playfully. She honors his request all the same. With a hand on each handrail, she begins to climb the steep stairs.

It isn’t long until she is sweating beneath her party dress. When a window of worn, smoothed stone comes into view in the curved wall ahead, she nearly cries out in relief. She climbs the last few stairs and plants her palms on the windowsill, smiling already, anticipating the breeze from the sea cooling her face—but when her eyes search for Scout and the docks below, her smile falters. 

Julian climbs up beside her. His jacket is slung over his shoulder, his sleeves rolled, his dress shirt unopened. He gives Aredhel a questioning glance; he must notice the look of confusion and caution on her face. Wordlessly, she steps to the side to make room for Julian at the windowsill, and gestures for him to take a look. 

A mere glance catapults Julian into action. He throws himself against the window, his hands on the worn stone; his shoulders and his chest pass through the stone frame as he cranes his neck, looking every which way around the tower.

Below is a city Aredhel has never seen—but it is familiar to her, all the same. She has been told enough about it to guess its name. A grey-blue sea froths and foams to the west, but to the east, in a crescent-shaped bay, a several sheltered harbors mark a sprawling port. White buildings, washed in lime, cling on craggy outcroppings and into the valley between two dark, purple mountains. Between the slate and deep green trees, mine shafts pock the mountainside. 

“Incredible,” Julian says, so softly Aredhel almost does not hear him. “It’s home.”

But he stiffens, then, with the weight of his mistake; he corrects, “It  _ looks  _ just like home. Hocus pocus.” 

Julian heaves himself back in the window. He passes a look at Aredhel over his shoulder; when her eyes meet his, he softens. “Come here?”

Aredhel joins him; Julian wraps his arms around her and hooks his chin over her shoulder. “Down there,” he says, pointing at the city below, “that building with the blue domed roof? That was our temple. The grandmas took us every Saturday. And there,” he says, as his forefinger traces the crags between the buildings, the narrow streets. His fingertip pauses over a clear square, marked only by a tall, red pillar. “That’s the market where we would go to sell our homemade bath salts. Which means…” 

Julian’s finger follows a meandering route, left, right, then right between the buildings until his finger comes to a stop on a quarter at the edge of town, right at the feet of the mountains. His hand hovers… trembles, slightly.

Aredhel presses her cheek to his. “Is that where you grew up?”

Julian does not speak, but he nods, his chin bobbing against Aredhel’s collar. His hand falls, both arms wrapping around her waist again. Aredhel sinks into his embrace, lets him take comfort in their closeness as her eyes look over the Nevivon city below. She wonders which of those streets Julian filled with his vielle music. She wonders which house belongs to the widow Irina Petrovna.

“I know it’s just magic,” Julian says, finally, his voice quiet and thick with emotion, “but I still feel a little overwhelmed seeing it again. That’s silly, isn’t it?”

“It isn’t silly, Julian.”

Julian hugs her a little tighter. He takes a deep breath, as if he is gathering his strength—gathering as much of the sight stretched beneath him into his memory as he can—before he releases both girl and breath, backing away from the window. 

“We should keep moving,” he says, and clears the way for Aredhel to proceed. 

So she does. Back up along the curving way, ascending the lighthouse, sweating through their formalwear. Aredhel is thankful for the handrails; the stairs become so steep she feels she is pulling herself upwards as much as she is climbing with her legs. 

Just as her legs are screaming with the exertion, a second window comes into view ahead. It is less round than the first, framed in clean-cut lemonstone. Aredhel does not think on it, only hauls herself up the last few steps to the window, seeking the relief of another breeze. She leans her elbows on the windowsill, peering out at the view. 

Below: a city she recognizes at a glance, though she’s never seen it from this vantage point. Her feet know the the shape of the harbor, her eyes have admired the spires and minarets of the temple district from below. Inland, on a hill, the palace glows golden in the indigo night. 

Julian climbs up behind her, placing his hands in her waist, looking around her. He names the city: “Vesuvia.”

A bang echoes down the hill and out across the city; the sky above the palace brightens with showers of purple and gold fireworks. 

Julian presses closer for a better look. “Looks like someone is having a party.” Then, he stiffens against Aredhel’s back. “Aredhel, is this—is this now? Is this happening right now?” His hands tighten their grip on her hips and lift her onto the next step, out of his way. He leans out the window again, gazing out at the harbor.

When he pulls himself back inside, he stumbles; the color has drained from his face. He fumbles for the handrails behind him, holds them tight. 

Aredhel’s stomach sinks. “Julian? What is it?” she asks, peering out the window to look for whatever it is that has upset him.

Fireworks still rain over the palace. But, “Look at the lagoon,” Julian tells her, directing her attention back to the water. “The Lazaret—something is burning.”

A column of thick, black smoke rises from the shores of the Lazaret; Aredhel is thankful they are not close enough to smell it. But this is not the real lighthouse that guides the ships to shore; this is not really Vesuvia. They could be looking at anything: any number of times in the past when the Count had thrown fêtes as his citizens burned across the water and sickened in his streets. The realms of the Arcana were malleable: perhaps that was Vesuvia ‘ _ right now _ ,’ or a vision of the city as it had been, or as it would be, should certain events come to pass.

“Whatever is happening, and it may not be that,” Aredhel says, turning to Julian, “the only thing we can do about it is keep going. We must be nearly at the top by now.”

“Aredhel,” Julian says, his eyes looking not quite at her but at the window behind her, “why are we seeing all this? What are we going to find up there?”

“Nothing we can’t handle.” She steps towards him, rests her palms against his chest. “We haven’t yet come up against something we couldn’t face together. This will be no different.”

Julian covers one of her hands with his, brushing his fingers against hers. He leans his forehead against her temple, presses his nose to her cheek, breathes deep.

“Okay. Let’s go.”

  
  
  


Five steps onward and the air grows thick, sticky with humidity. Five more and the way ahead begins to cloud. 

It is not long, then, before the stairs even out to a landing. They must have reached the lantern room, Aredhel thinks, but she cannot be certain. The atmosphere in the lighthouse has grown so opaque with thick, white fog that she cannot make out much of anything at all, beyond the stairs. The mist seems utterly impenetrable.

Julian beats Aredhel to the comparison: “Aredhel, is it just me, or is this just like—oh!”

Deeper in the mist a brilliant light winks in and out. Julian’s thought no longer needs finishing:  _ that  _ is very unlike the mist surrounding the Tower, which had suffered no brightness, nor inconsistency. Aredhel fumbles behind her for Julian’s hand, and makes her way in the direction of the light. 

It is the lantern, she realizes—they are, after all, in the lantern room. There must be a lens fixed around it, turning on a mechanism, amplifying the light in a sweep long arc around the tower. But as they draw closer, Aredhel realizes it is no simple lantern at all, nothing so pedestrian as an oil-soaked wick and a flickering flame. Instead, beyond the glass is a cluster of glittering stars, spangling on their pedestal, brilliant despite the fog that tries to choke their light. 

“Aredhel, look!”

She tears her eyes from the lamp. She can just make out Julian’s figure through the fog. He has hardly spared the beacon a second glance; he stands on the opposite side of the lantern in front of a wooden door, so ancient and weathered its red paint is peeling off of it like birch bark.

“This could be it!” he calls. “Maybe this is how we get back!”

His hands seize the knob; he struggles. No matter how he leans his body against it, or twists his wrist, the door does not yield.

“Damn it!” Julian curses. 

“Maybe try going forward with joy, instead of fear?”

A new voice—brighter and higher than Aredhen’s or Julian’s—cuts through the lantern room. Aredhel turns towards it; Julian circles around the beacon to join her. Out of the mist emerges a feline figure, carrying a jug of water, crowned in dogwood blossoms. Aredhel recognizes them on sight. How could she not, after so many hours spent practicing with Asra’s Arcana?

The Star turns its eyes—white in blue, like the moon reflected on the sea—to look at her. “Figured it out, have you, Aredhel?”

“It took me longer than it should have.”

The Star winks at her. “You got there in the end, and that’s what counts.”

“What are you talking about?” Julian asks, glancing between them. “Aredhel, who is this?”

“This is the Star,” Aredhel explains. “We have been in their realm since we fell into the forest.”

“The Star,” Julian repeats, blinking, before he crosses his arms over his chest. “Well, alright. If you’re in charge here, tell me: where are we? Why are we here? The Magician told us to seek out our purpose, but I don’t see what this has to do with any of it,” he says, gesturing around at the fog, the beacon, the lantern room itself.

“It has everything to do with it!” the Star beams, brightly. They gesture to the cluster of stars, set in the beacon behind their backs. “You found it! That’s is it, Julian: your purpose. Or, a symbol of it, anyway.”

With a wave of their hand, the Star pulls a ribbon of water out of the jug in the crook of her arm. “It’s a metaphor—the Arcana, we  _ really _ like our metaphors.” They draws their arm in an arc; the ribbon of water flattens to a disk, a mirror, reflecting Julian’s face back at him.

“Like a lighthouse guides a ship to port, our sense of purpose guides our path in life,” the Star says. “It keeps us true to ourselves.”

Just then, the lense of the beacon swings back around; the light catches on the water between the Star’s hands, golden and brilliant and sparkling, and it fills the lantern room with tremulous light. It lasts only a moment. Then the lens continues its revolution, and the room greys, and the mist thickens.

Julian’s face falls. He turns to the beacon behind him, raising his hand to touch the warm glass as he gazes at the stars within. “If that’s my purpose,” he says, shoulders sagging, “it’s hardly bright enough to light the room. It can’t guide anything anywhere.”

“Metaphors, remember?” the Star prompts. A twist of their wrist and the water between their hands curls up into a neat, perfectly round sphere. They toss it up and down, catching it each time, but never taking their eyes off of Julian. “Wanna guess what the fog represents?”

Julian’s brow furrows in concentration. He fixes his gaze on his shoes, opens and closes his mouth as he considers his answer. Then, with a look of defeat, he meets the Star’s eyes.

“It’s my failure, isn’t it? It’s all the times I’ve failed, and how I’m—I’m going to fail again, probably.” His voice sounds so small, so broken. “How I couldn’t stop the plague the first time. All the people in the clinic that we let down. And Aredhel….”

He does not finish the thought, but Aredhel can still see him thinking it. She had told him: ‘ _ we are brand new, _ ’ but he is still holding on to something old, the poison of a past he cannot change. 

Aredhel slips her hand into his. “It’s okay,” she tells him. Julian smiles when he glances at her, but in a sad sort of way that replies, very clearly, ‘ _ no, it really isn’t. _ ’

The Star’s smile turns sympathetic. “You’ve lived a long time with nothing to lose, haven’t you, Julian?” The sphere of water between their hands thins until it is slender as the first sheets of ice on the Vesuvian canals. Images—memories?—coalesce on its surface: Julian locked in his office beneath the palace, then fleeing from the city, circling the world, evading capture. “But now you realize how much you  _ do  _ have.”

Like a window to his heart, the faces of those most dear to Julian flicker on the water: Portia, Mazelinka, Doctor Satrinava, men and women Aredhel has not yet met… even Asra. The last face to float on the water’s surface is Aredhel’s own.

“Now you have people in your corner who love you, who you can rely on,” the Star continues. “You’ve realized how incredibly lucky you are—how wealthy, in love. All of a sudden you have a  _ lot _ to lose—and it frightens you.”

“Shouldn’t it?” Julian retorts. “Everyone back at the Masquerade is in danger. We can’t let Lucio succeed, but we still don’t know how to stop him.” Julian releases Aredhel’s hand. Frustration plain on his face, his fingers tighten into curled fists. “We haven’t figured out how to get Aredhel’s body back. We’re running out of time, and  _ we haven’t gained anything. _ ”

“Haven’t you?” the Star asks, tilting their head. The water condenses back into a sphere, then unravels, like a ball of yarn, a trickle of water threading back into theit jug. “Julian, you already have everything you need. You wanna know what unlocks that door over there?” they ask, nodding at the red door on the other side of the beacon. “Courage. And faith.” 

Julian scowls. “Naturally—two traits which I lack in abundance.”

The Star’s expression softens. Gently, they say, “That’s just not true, Julian. You’ve demonstrated plenty of both on your way here.”

“Wait, wait a minute, on our way  _ here _ …?” Julian repeats. Something clicks. He turns to Aredhel. “You said—you said we had been in the Star’s realm since we fell into the forest. Does that—that means,” he says, turning back to the Star, “the spider, the water—everything that happened to us on our way to this lighthouse—that was  _ you _ ?”

“Only meant to teach you your own strength,” the Star answers, tail flicking indignantly at the accusation in his tone. “You were never in any real danger. It was only meant to prepare you for the danger ahead.”

“That didn't teach me to be brave—it taught me to be afraid!” Julian exclaims. “Afraid of putting Aredhel in danger, of making her hurt—”

“Aredhel is already in danger,” the Star tells him, their voice patient. “As are you, and everyone you love, and all the innocents in the city you once called home.” 

The Arcana takes a few steps forward; almost reflexively, Julian leans away beside Aredhel. But when the Star places their paw on Julian’s shoulder, he does not pull away.

“You name the Devil’s servant, but it is his Master that you should fear,” the Star tells him, their eyes locked on Jullian’s. “The Devil wishes to enter the waking world—he  _ cannot _ be allowed to succeed. He will destroy your world, if he does. The plague will only be the beginning. The Nevivon lighthouse, the golden fields, the cold fjords—all the places you have been, all the places you wish to go, to take Aredhel—all of it will burn, if the Devil succeeds in his plans.”

“Then why are we here?!” Julian asks, exasperated, grimacing. “Why are we wasting time with—with magic tricks, and riddles?”

But the Star is unfazed by his outburst. “Because you have forgotten yourself,” they say, simply. “And that will make it very difficult and very painful for you, the task that lies ahead. Luckily for you, you are not alone. You may have lost yourself…but she hasn’t.” The Star’s eyes slide from Julian’s to Aredhel’s, and they favor the apprentice with a gentle smile. “She remembers. She knows you.”

Aredhel feels the weight of two sets of eyes upon her, then—both the Star’s, and Julian’s—but she only meets his. A smile, both fond and sad, plays about his lips.

“She does,” he agrees, a fond smile curling at his lips. “By now she knows me better than anyone, probably. And I…” his voice trails off. His eyes fall to his feet; his eyebrows knit together.

Still his hands are clenched at his sides; now that he has torn his eyes away from her, Aredhel cannot help but look at them. Think of how she loves them. His thick wrists and long fingers, the back of his hands ever-so-slightly freckled. They still shake, slightly; frustration, it looks like, but in their trembling, Aredhel senses fear.

“I would do anything for her,” he says. “I would stay here with her if she asked me. If it meant I could be with her, that I could know she was safe… I would never go back to our bodies.”

“No, you wouldn’t.” He is afraid—he does not know himself. But Aredhel knows him. “You couldn’t,” she continues, and reaches out for his hands again. “Stay here? Never see Pasha again, never know if Mazelinka is safe? No. In less than a week you’d be beating your wings against the walls, worried for everyone we’d left behind, tearing yourself to pieces over your guilt. Hiding here with me—that’s not you, Ilya.”

‘ _ You are the wanted fugitive who reached to protect me—an innocent—when Malak sounded the alarm, when the palace guards were coming. You have done nothing but put the needs of others above your own since I met you.’ _

“I don’t know what I am—who I am—anymore,” Julian confesses to her quietly, turning away from the Star to take both Aredhel’s hands in his. “I have never felt this way before. So  _ frightened. _ I don’t know what to do with it.”

“It’s okay to be afraid, Julian,” Aredhel tells him, with a reassuring smile. “There’s always fear. Fear of loss, fear of pain… the key is to keep moving despite it. That’s what bravery really is.”

“If something happened to you—”

“Then you would keep moving,” Aredhel says, giving him no space to argue. “We’ll protect each other as best we can—that’s what people who love each other do.”

Her heart flutters a little to say it out loud— _ love. _ She does love him, even if she isn’t quite ready to say it so plainly yet.

Aredhel hardens her expression; holds his hands firmer. “But love is not meant to make us selfish, Ilya Devorak. We are meant to take strength from it, and return it to the world in generosity and compassion, and kindness.”

Julian huffs. “And bravery, too, I suppose?”

“ _ And _ bravery.” Aredhel leans up onto her toes to kiss him gently; when she sinks back to her heels her grin is mischievous, delighted. “Besides, imagine the story it will make! The magician and the dead man, taking on the Devil himself.”

Julian laughs—that beautiful surprised, barking laugh that Aredhel has adored since she first heard it. “And will you endure me telling it for the rest of our lives? Or will you run for the hills, after the tale has grown tall, and I’m telling everyone who will listen in every tavern we visit about the time you beat back a twenty-foot spider with your bare hands?”

“If it earns us a free drink or two, I won’t complain.”

“How cheaply won!” Julian exclaims, teasing. “I think, when we succeed, Nadia will reward you with much more than a bottle or two of Golden Goose leftover from the party.”

“‘ _ When _ ’ we succeed,” Aredhel repeats, winding her body closer to Julian’s, her hips flush to his. “I like the sound of that.”

She moves to kiss him—but before she does, the beacon behind them flashes so abruptly and so bright they have to shield their eyes against it. Julian’s hands are still close around hers; in the dark behind her eyelids Aredhel feels Julian lead her away from the lamp. The light does not dim. But gradually, blinking, bleary, their eyes adjust.

The fog has cleared. The world outside the glass windows is pink and gold, the rising sun still warming the sky and the water in pastel colors. They are so high up in the lighthouse they can barely see the island on which the tower sits; instead, it seems as if nothing but water stretches away from them on all sides, the sea calm and glittering in the dawn.

The Star stands before them, grinning with pride. “Why don’tcha try that door again?” 

Beyond the lantern the door still stands; from beneath the wood, a crimson light—unlike the warm, comforting light of the dawn outside—leaks from beneath the door across the worn tile floor. Wordlessly, Julian rises from his crouch. Without taking his hand from Aredhel’s, he guides them across the room. His gait, while slow, is decisive.

Before they reach the door, the Star calls after them: 

“He will try to divide you—the Devil. It’s what he does. Don’t let him. If you have any hope of succeeding, you have to stick together.”

“We will,” Julian replies, his face set in determination. When he turns to Aredhel, though, he grins; he raises her hands to his lips, pressing a kiss to her knuckles. “I won’t leave her side.”

“I know,” the Star says with a wink, “I have faith in you.”

Only a few steps remain between them and the door. Julian reaches for the knob, but just before his hands close around it… he hesitates.

“Julian?” Aredhel asks, searching his face. “Are you okay?”

“Bit of butterflies. But I’m okay.” He turns to favor her with one last smile, and his hair catches the light of the stars behind him… and he looks nervous, yes, but more peaceful, less anxious, maybe, than he had before.

“And you, Aredhel? Are you ready?”

She nods in answer, and his hands close around the knob.

Julian thrusts open the door. Hand in hand, Aredhel and Julian step into the red light—into the realm of the Devil. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Not to be that content creator, but I felt so disappointed in the writing of the last update that it threw me into an emotional winter and I literally could not write anything else until I "fixed" it to better suit my tastes. I'm not sure I succeeded completely... there are still things in this piece I'm not totally happy with, but it's getting, hmm. A little too close to real life, so I'm publishing it so I can be done with editing it.
> 
> Thank you to all my friends who supported me during my dry spell, and all the people who sent kind messages on tumblr. Hopefully now I can get back to filling all those Kinktober prompts. XD
> 
> Extra special thanks to @saturnsage for helping me with my Russian. (There was only one Russian word in this and I still needed help with it. :l )
> 
> also credit to Tanith Lee for the line "we are brand new, all-over-again" which I read in Metallic Love, clutched my face to my throat, whispered 'yes' and immediately knew I had to include in a Julian fic at some point, and now I have (:


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